Is there enough time for Carly Fiorina to win the GOP nomination?

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In this Spet. 16, 2015, photo, Republican presidential candidate, businesswoman Carly Fiorina makes a point during the CNN Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif. Fiorina’s first challenge in the Republican debate was simply getting a spot on the main stage. Now, after a standout performance, her next quest is to convert a burst of enthusiasm for her candidacy into actual support from voters and donors. Her success or failure will determine whether her breakthrough moment becomes a turning point in the Republican primary or simply a footnote. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Carly Fiorina won over Republicans of all stripes with her strong debate performance Wednesday night, but now some political experts are asking a new question: With five months to go before the first votes are cast, can the former Hewlett-Packard CEO actually win the GOP nomination?

Conservative pundits seemed particularly ecstatic with her performance at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, perhaps because they see her as an alternative to the “nonpolitican” leading in the polls going into the debate — a political wrecking ball named Donald Trump. The third outsider, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, has surged in recent polls. But he seemed tepid at the debate, particularly when compared to Fiorina.

Glenn Beck, formerly of Fox News, called her “presidential, serious, sharp, well-informed, nonestablishment and tough,” while the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said she sounded like “a modern-day Margaret Thatcher.” Both assessments were incorporated into an exultant fundraising email that the Fiorina campaign sent Thursday morning.

Some political analysts, however, renewed their criticisms of Fiorina, who they say too often plays it fast and loose with the facts on foreign policy, Planned Parenthood and her own business record.

Still, there’s little doubt that Fiorina will be able to ride a political wave into another month of stumping at a breakneck pace — she’ll be in South Carolina, Michigan and Iowa just in the next week. But no longer a scrappy underdog, she may soon find herself a top contender with a bull’s-eye on her back.

Perhaps it’s already there. On Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie carped on CNN’s “New Day” that Fiorina talked too much about herself and interrupted him and others too often.

“She’s got one place on the stage, not two or three,” Christie said. “I’m happy to sit and listen to her, but don’t interrupt me and don’t interrupt the other candidates.”

Some political experts, however, heard that as little more than “Waaaaaaaaah.”

“Christie is just about the last person in the world who has the standing to complain about another candidate being aggressive,” quipped Jack Pitney, a former Republican operative who now teaches politics at Claremont McKenna College. “Fiorina did an extremely good job — a lot of people in the audience probably weren’t familiar with her, and they came away with a very good impression. I expect her numbers to rise sharply.”

Yet, Pitney said, she still has the same liabilities she had when she lost California’s 2010 U.S. Senate race to Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer by 10 percentage points — most notably her record at HP. Fiorina presided over 30,000 layoffs and a questionable corporate merger before the board of directors fired her after the stock price plunged, giving her a “golden parachute” of $21 million cash plus $19 million in stock and pension benefits.

“If she was the Republican nominee, the Democrats’ ad campaign would be simple: All they’d have to do is rerun the ads that Barbara Boxer ran,” Pitney said, adding that no president has completely lacked military or elected-office experience. “Eventually the voters are going to want to know if the candidate has the necessary experience to be commander-in-chief.”

“But all that is for later,” he said. “Right now, she’s riding high.”

After starting off very low in the polls, Fiorina went into Wednesday’s debate ranked eighth among the 16 GOP candidates, according to an average of four recent national polls compiled by Real Clear Politics; she was sixth in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire. It’ll be a while before polls catch up to the debate, but social-media data show Fiorina had a great night.

Google reported that Fiorina and Trump were the most-searched candidates during and after the debate. And Twitter reported that Fiorina not only gained more followers than any other candidate, but also was involved in the two most tweeted moments: her response to Trump’s earlier comments regarding her looks and her discussion of defunding Planned Parenthood.

In the former moment, she was invited to respond to Trump’s assertion in a Rolling Stone profile that she was unelectable because of her appearance. “Look at that face!” he told the magazine. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”

Fiorina replied that just as Trump insisted he had heard former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush vow to cut women’s health funding, “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.” Then she paused for thunderous applause as Trump, accustomed to deferential treatment in his reality television career, twisted in the breeze.

Mic drop!

Even Trump had to admit Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Fiorina “did well.” Fiorina modestly told the same show she had merely hoped to build name recognition: “I was satisfied that I said what I needed to say last night.”

Harmeet Dhillon, the California Republican Party’s vice chairwoman, had said in May that she didn’t know a single person who thought Fiorina would be the GOP’s nominee. Most thought instead that she was aiming for a vice-presidential nod or maybe a cabinet post. But Dhillon now believes Fiorina is “a candidate for the number-one slot.”

“She clearly outperformed all of the other candidates. … She had the facts at her fingertips,” said Dhillon, of San Francisco. “But more importantly, she was able to deliver those facts in a very clear, crisp, understandable way. It was very statesman-like.”